The Testimony of
Radiocarbon Dating

In 1952 Willard F. Libby, then of the University of Chicago, published his
Radiocarbon Dating. It was about half a century after the discovery
of cosmic rays that he had come upon the idea, and also developed a method,
of using the radioactivity resulting from cosmic rays for the purpose of
dating organic remains. Libbys discoveries gave immediate support
and even vindication to three independent conclusions of my research into
natural events of the past, as described in Worlds in Collision and
Earth in Upheavalthe time the Ice Age ended, the time petroleum
was deposited, and the time of the classical period of Meso-american civilization.(1)

However, the main interest for me in radiocarbon tests was in checking
on historical dates of the ancient East, of the period covered in Ages
in Chaos. This method was as if created to sit in judgment in the
litigation between the accepted and revised time tables.

In Ages in Chaos we have seen that, with the fall of the Middle
Kingdom and the Exodus synchronized, events in the histories of the peoples
of the ancient world coincide all along the centuries.

For a space of over one thousand years records of Egyptian history have
been compared with the records of the Hebrews, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and
finally with those of the Greeks, with a resulting correspondence which
denotes synchronism.

In Volume I of Ages in Chaos it was shown in great detail why
Akhnaton of the Eighteenth Dynasty must be placed in the latter part of
the ninth century. If Akhnaton flourished in -840 and not in -1380, the
ceramics from Mycenae found in the palace of Akhnaton are younger by five
or six hundred years than they are presumed to be, and the Late Mycenaean
period would accordingly move forward by about half a thousand years on
the scale of time.

I wished to have radiocarbon tests that would clarify the issue. I did
not need the test in order to strengthen my view on the age of the Eighteenth
and the following dynasties, for I considered the evidence that I had
presented in Ages in Chaos to be strong enough to carry the weight
of the revised scheme. But in view of the novelty of my contentions I
realized that a confirmation from a physical method would be of great
import for the acceptance of my work.

The efforts that I spent in order to achieve radiocarbon examination
of any suitable object from the New Kingdom in Egypt were many and persistent.
Correspondence between the British Museum and myself did not produce the
desired results, though I was politely answered by the departments of
Egyptian, of Assyro-Babylonian and of Greek antiquities. The Museum has
a radiocarbon laboratory of its own, and therefore the task could be simplified;
but the Museum claimed other preferential tasks. At one time I secured
the help of the late Professor Robert H. Pfeiffer, Director of the Semitic
Museum of Harvard University in an effort to obtain some organic relics
from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but to no avail. Even Albert Einsteins
plea, relayed to the Museum by his secretary upon his death, to have my
work of reconstruction of ancient history tested by radiocarbon, went
unheeded.

The usual argument explaining the refusal of cooperation was the assertion
that the Egyptian chronology of the New Kingdom is known to such exactness
that no carbon tests are needed; moreover the tests were claimed to have
a margin of error far greater than the incertitude of the historians as
to New Kingdom dates.

Since the chronology of ancient Egypt is quite closely fixed
by the astronomical evidence from the Eleventh Dynasty onward, in part,
to the nearest year, radiocarbon, with its substantial margin of error,
could hardly add anything to our knowledge of the chronology of the New
Kingdom. . . .

Thus wrote a member of the faculty of the University of California in Los
Angeles in response to an inquiry and a plea of a reader of mine.(2)
Similarly wrote an assistant curator of the British Museum:

There has been so far as I am aware no radiocarbon dating of
objects from the New Kingdom. I do not think that such a test, given the
necessary measure of tolerance which must be allowed, is likely at the
moment to give a chronology for the New Kingdom which is any more certain
than a chronology deduced by historical methods.

Another reader of mine wrote to the Director of the Metropolitan Museum
and read in the reply he received:

In the light of the very complete knowledge we have on this
tightly dated and closely recorded period, it would serve no useful purpose
to have this done. . . .

It almost looked as if there were a concerted opposition to the submission
of any object dating from the New Kingdom to a radiocarbon test. I have
even employed the argument, for instance at my coming to see Dr. William
Hayes, the late Director of the Egyptological Department of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art: Let the test be made in order to disprove me. My book Ages
in Chaos was read by hundreds of thousands of readers and found many
followerswhy not show me wrong if this is so easy? But such arguments
were not effective either.

During the ten years after the publication of Libbys
Radiocarbon Dating in 1952, which was also the year Ages in
Chaos was published, the great period of history in accepted Egyptian
chronology from -1580, the beginning of the New Kingdom (or rather from
-1680, the fall of the Middle Kingdom) to the time of the Ptolemies, a
period of ca. 1250 years in the accepted chronology, a tremendous stretch
of time, was left out of radiocarbon testing programs. My efforts, spread
over ten years and more, were directed to many museums and places of learning,
but they were all in vain. I have recorded and filed the exchanges that
took place between my supporters, myself, and those in whose power it
was to have the tests made. The museums showed no willingness to cooperate.

For a while it looked a little more hopeful when my friend, Claude F.
A. Schaeffer, the excavator of Ras Shamra (Ugarit), acceded to my urging
and sent to Dr. Elizabeth Ralph of Pennsylvania University a piece of
wood found in the neighborhood of another object which he dated to the
reign of Merneptah of the Nineteenth Dynasty. However, the sample became
contaminated in the laboratory. From a French laboratory, where a control
piece of the same find was sent, no answer was forthcoming, and the circumstances
of the find gave no assurancehad either laboratory succeeded in
obtaining a resultthat the piece of wood from Ras Shamra really
dated from the reign of Merneptah in Egypt.

It looked as if the only result of all my efforts would be a stately
volume of letters and memoranda entitled ASH.
It is to ash that organic specimens must be converted to make the test.
It was ash also in the sense that many efforts ended in nothing.

In the meantime, certain systematic disagreement in datings by the radio
carbon method with the conventional historical time tables was observed
all over the world. But above and beyond this generally observed phenomenon,
the Egyptian datings stood unreconciled with the results of the carbon
tests. This made quite a few Egyptologists express their disbelief in
the carbon method and the physicists even bolder in assuming that the
Egyptologists were victims of some undefined systematic error. The perplexing
Egyptian dates were discussed at the conference of the workers in radiocarbon
that took place in Cambridge July 1962, and two laboratories, of Groeningen
in Holland and of the University of Pennsylvania, were entrusted with
the task of clarifying the issue. At that time the New Kingdom was apparently
not yet investigated on radiocarbon dates, but if it was investigated,
the results were never made known.

A few years later the radiocarbon laboratory of the University of Rome
published a survey of tests made by various laboratories. Dates of 54
archaeological and historical samples from Egypt were published up to
the summer of 1964. Some of these have been repeatedly dated both by the
same lab, and as cross-check samples.(3)

These measurements have shown that most Egyptian samples give a C-14
age which is less than expected historical age often based on astronomical
evidences. No satisfactory physical or archaeological explanation of this
fact yet found, except a physical attempt by Damon and Long.(4)

Again it seems that only Old and Middle Kingdom material was the subject
of the review. The physical attempt of Damon and Long referred
to in this report considers the possibility that about two millennia before
the present era the influx of cosmic rays suddenly changed in rate and
that as a consequence the radiocarbon ratio in the carbon pool changed,
too. Actually such or similar surmises were expressed by Dr. Ralph, as
also by Dr. H. E. Suess and by others.

The change in the influx of cosmic rays could have occurred either in
the case of the Earth, together with the rest of the solar system, passing
close to a source of such rays, a nova or a supernova; or, preferably,
as Suess assumed, in the case of a change in the strength of the magnetic
field that shields the Earth from cosmic rays.

These surmises were repeatedly made because anomalous readings from
the early periods of Egyptian history accumulated, mostly pointing to
more recent dates. Dr. Libby, however, expressed his view that the Egyptian
chronology may be wrong.(5)

In Science for April, 1963, he wrote:

The data [in the Table] are separated into two groupsEgyptian
and non-Egyptian. This separation was made because the whole Egyptian
chronology is interlocking and subject to possible systemic errors . .
. Egyptian historical dates beyond 4000 years ago may be somewhat too
old, perhaps 5 centuries too old at 5000 years ago. . .(6)

Thus the two solutions offered concerning the too recent dates for the
Middle Kingdom actually amounted to either a support for Ages in Chaos
or for Worlds in Collision, or for both.

In the conventional scheme of history, the Middle Kingdom ended about
-1680. In Ages in Chaos the end of the Middle Kingdom is placed
at about -1450. Whereas for most of the Eighteenth Dynasty I claimed that
the dates need to be reduced by about 540 years, for the end of the Middle
Kingdom the restructured timetable required but about 200 years change
toward greater recentness.

A later issue of Radiocarbon brought radiocarbon dates of the
Middle Kingdom in Egypt, with the verdict that this period of history
did not terminate in -1780 or even in -1680 but endured into the fifteenth
century before the present era,(7)
as postulated in Ages in Chaos. All this was surmised before tests
on New Kingdom material were considered.

In 1963 it seemed hopeless to expect that there would ever be a radiocarbon
test of Egyptian chronology of the New and Late Kingdoms, the mainstay
of the chronological structure of the entire complex known as the ancient
East.

But then from a series of chance meetings a story developed that had
all the characteristics of a cloak-and-dagger mystery. I will not tell
it here, but the result was that three small pieces of wood from the tomb
of Tutankhamen were delivered from Cairo Museum to Dr. Elizabeth Ralph
of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania.

It took a long time, but finally the three pieces of wood were processed.
On February 25, 1964 Dr. Ralph wrote me:

“Your great patience in waiting for the C-14 date of the wood from the
tomb of Tutankhamen is greatly appreciated. The dates . . . are as follows:

U. of Pa. Lab No.

Name

Age calc. with 5568 half-life

Age calc. with 5730 half-life

P-726

Wood from coffin of Tutankhamen, 18th Dynasty

1030 ± 50 B.C.

1120 ± 52 B.C.

The carbon age of the wood from the tomb of Tutankhamen was found to
be about 300 years younger than the accepted date of the death of this
kingmore exactly, 320 years according to Libby’s figure for the
half-life of radiocarbon, or 230 years following the Washington scale
(5730 half-life).

Statements had repeatedly been madeand some of them were quoted
on previous pagesthat the method cannot be profitably applied
to the problems of Egyptian chronology of the New Kingdom because the
uncertainty of the method far exceeds the uncertainty of the dates.
These statements were shown to be baseless: the method with a fifty-year
uncertainty exposed an error of several hundred years in Egyptian chronology.
Obviously the lumber used in the tomb could not have been growing as
a tree three hundred years later.

But I was not completely satisfied with the result, and I suspected
where the additional two hundred years or so may have lain hidden. In
my reconstruction, Tutankhamens death falls in the second half of
the ninth century. In a letter to Dr. Ralph I inquired whether the carbon
age of a trunk discloses the time when the tree was felled or the time
of the formation of the tree rings. To this, on March 5, 1964, a week
after her first report, Dr. Ralph answered that the latter was true.

Various tests have indicated that only the outer growth ring
of a tree has a contemporaneous amount of C-14, that is, it is in equilibrium
with the atmospheric C-14. Except for a slight diffusion of sap inward,
which seems to be insignificant, the inner rings seem to have C-14 ages
representative of the years that have elapsed since they were outer rings.
Therefore, a C-14 date for a sample cut from the inner part of a log would
not be representative of the time of the cutting of the tree.
The magnitude of the error varies greatly in different regions and with
different trees.

Among many archaeologists this fact is not known, and an Orientalist of
the stature of W. F. Albright, to whom I showed the reports of Dr. Ralph,
expressed great amazement over it.(8)

The three pieces of wood from the tomb of Tutankhamen consisted of Spina
Christi (two pieces, aggregate weight 14.5 grams) and Cedar of Lebanon
(weight 11.5 grams); since they together weighed but 26 grams, and 25
grams is considered the necessary minimum quantity for a test, all were
tested as one batch. Spina Christi is a comparatively short-lived thorn
plant; but Cedar of Lebanon is one of the longest living trees. There
is no question that the Cedar of Lebanon was not cut for export as a sapling;
the tree reaches the venerable age of a thousand and more years. Whoever
visits the cedar forests still surviving in a few areas of Lebanon at
elevations of five to nine thousand feet, and sees their majestic trunks
and branches, will realize that since 43 percent of the wood from the
tomb of Tutankhamen tested (11 grams out of 26) was Cedar of Lebanon,
the probability is that an additional correction of several hundred years
is necessary, thus making the discord between the accepted and the carbon
dates much greater than three hundred years.

The report on wood from Tutankhamen’s tomb was printed in 1965 in the
annual volume of Radiocarbon. The circumstances of the find of
this tomb are well known. In 1922 Howard Carter, digging in the Valley
of the Kings, came upon a hidden stairway, and a door sealed with the
seal of the priests of the Necropolis and also with the seal of the dead
pharaoh, the youthful Tutankhamen. In my Oedipus and Akhnaton I
presented a reconstruction of the events that led to Tutankhamen’s
death. If the tomb was ever opened, it could only have happened in the
reign of Ay, who succeeded Tutankhamen and whom I identified as the prototype
of Creon of the Greek legend of the Oedipus cycle. The tomb was also free
from percolating water and therefore there was no reason to suspect contamination
by water which might have first seeped through some decomposed organic
material. There could not be a better source for radiocarbon test but
that material itself.

Several other tests on wood from the New Kingdom in Egypt, also performed
in the laboratory headed by Dr. Ralph, were published in the same volume.
The specimens from the New Kingdom were assessed by their finders or by
specialists as dating from the Eighteenth (or in one case possibly from
the Nineteenth) Dynasty:

Sample no. & material

provenance

conventional date

C-14 date

P-717 Charcoal

estimated to be of Thutmoses III to Amenophis III
periods

1500 to 1370 B.C.

1161 B.C.

P-718 Charcoal

reign of Amenophis III

1408 to 1372 B.C.

1137 B.C.

P-720 Wood from sarcophagus

may date from end of 18th Dynasty or, more likely,
from the 19th Dynasty

1370 to 1314 B.C. or
1314 to 1200 B.C.

1031 B.C.

In all cases the age arrived at by radiocarbon testing was several centuries
younger than the conventional chronology would allow.

In view of what was said above concerning the radiocarbon age of a piece
of wood, any wood unless it is an annual plant would deceive by offering
a greater antiquity than the date of its use for building purposes. Clearly,
the preferred material for radiocarbon dating would be something like
grain, papyrus, cotton or linen, animal hide, or mummy remains. Any result
obtained from wood contains an x number of years that depend on the number
of rings and their count from the bark inward—and this x must not
be neglected in the estimates. Evidently further testing is necessary
and the tomb of Tutankhamen could provide grain, dried flowers (probably
not enough for a test), or a piece of mummy, if only the importance of
such a test for the entire field of Egyptian archaeology would be realized.

In 1971, or seven years later, the British Museum processed palm kernels
and mat reed from the tomb of Tutankhamen. The resulting dates, as Dr.
Edwards, Curator of the Egyptian Department of the British Museum, wrote
to the University of Pennsylvania radiocarbon laboratory, were -899 for
the palm kernels and -846 for the mat reed.(9)

These results, however, were never published.

Such cases make me appeal that all tests, irrespective of how much the
results disagree with the accepted chronological data, should be made
public. I believe also that if nothing else, the curiosity of the British
Museum Laboratory officials should have induced them to ask for additional
material from the Tutankhamen tomb instead of discontinuing the quest
because “On the basis of the dating it was decided that the samples did
not come from the tomb” and therefore it “was decided that the results
should not be published.”(10)

In the Proceedings of the Symposium on Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute
Chronology held at Uppsala in 1969, T. Säve-Söderbergh and I. U. Olsson
introduce their report with these words:

C 14 dating was being discussed at a symposium on the prehistory
of the Nile Valley. A famous American colleague, Professor Brew, briefly
summarized a common attitude among archaeologists towards it, as follows:
“If a C 14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If
it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if
it is completely out of date we just drop it.” Few archaeologists who
have concerned themselves with absolute chronology are innocent of having
sometimes applied this method. . .(11)

Another way of dulling the sharp disagreements between the accepted
chronology and the results of the tests is described by Israel Isaacson.(12)

In this case nothing was purposely hidden, but two different approaches
were applied. In one and the same year the University of Pennsylvania
tested wood from a royal tomb in Gordion, capital of the short-lived Phrygian
Kingdom in Asia Minor, and from the palace of Nestor in Pylos, in S.W.
Greece. In Gordion the result was -1100; in Pylos -1200. However, according
to the accepted chronology, the difference should have been nearly 500
years—1200 for Pylos at the end of the Mycenaean age was well acceptable,
but -1100 for Gordion was not—the date should have been closer to
-700. Dr. Ralph came up with the solution for Gordion. The beams from
the tomb were squared and the inner rings could easily have been four
to five hundred years old when the tree was felled. But in Pylos the description
of the tested wood indicates that these were also squared beams—yet
the corrective was not applied—this because -1200 was the anticipated
figure. However, as I try to show in detail, there were never five centuries
of Dark Age between the Mycenaean Age and the historical (Ionic) Age of
Greece. If the same correction had been applied to both cases, then since
the Gordion beams were dated to -700, the Pylos beams should be dated
to ca. -800.

As mentioned earlier, the fact that the Middle Kingdom dates were regularly
found to be too young by several centuries caused the surmise by Damon
and Long that the influx of cosmic rays changed four thousand years ago
or thereabouts.

Now the question arises—how can the radiocarbon method be used
for deciding between the conventional and the revised chronologies?(13)

Libby, in his Radiocarbon Dating, stressed that the method is
good only on the condition that the influx of cosmic rays has not changed
during the last 25 or 30 thousand years, and also that the quantity of
water in the oceans has not changed in the same period of time. In a sequel
volume to Worlds in Collision I intend to show that the Earth passed
through a period of intense bombardment by cosmic rays at the time of
the Deluge. Libby’s insight, by the very fact of stressing these
preconditions for the validity of the method, is amazing.

The great catastrophe in the middle of the second millennium that terminated
the Middle Kingdom must also have disrupted all processes that underlie
the carbon dating method. On the one hand much radioactivity and radiation
must have been engendered as the consequence of interplanetary discharges,
and thus any organic material of a date after the catastrophe would appear
disproportionately younger than the material from earlier periods. On
the other hand, the general conflagration that accompanied the cosmic
catastrophe must have caused contamination of the air by carbon from burning
forests, and even more so by burning fossil carbon in oil and coal, besides
the contamination of the air by the products of volcanic eruptions, which
were simultaneous on all continents. Such intrusion of non-radioactive
carbon into the atmosphere would have disturbed the C-12/C-14 balance
in the sense of making any organic material that grew and lived after
the catastrophe appear in the carbon test as older and belonging to an
earlier age.

Thus two phenomena of opposite effect have acted in the catastrophes,
and depending on the preponderance of one of the two factors, the objects
subjected to test would appear younger or older than their real age. Furthermore,
carbon of extraterrestrial origin (ash and polymerized hydrocarbons) added
a third factor, and its evaluation in the carbon pool as to its tendency
to heighten or lower the radioactivity is hardly possible.

In the eighth century and the beginning of the seventh century before
the present era, the last series of cosmic catastrophes took place. Although
not of the same ferocity as far as the Earth was concerned, these catastrophes
and conflagrations must also have left their imprints on everything organic.

Thus radiocarbon dating needs to take into consideration the catastrophic
changes in historical and also prehistorical times. To determine the extent
of correction necessary to render the radiocarbon method reliable, dendrochronologists,
notably Suess, devised a plan to control the radiocarbon dates by building
a chronology of tree rings of the white bristlecone pine. However, three
or four rings formed in one year is not uncommon, especially if the tree
grows on a slope with the ground several times a year turning wet and
dry because of rapid outflow of water.(14)

And certainly the building of tree “ladders,” or carrying on the count
from one tree to another may arouse erroneous conclusions. One and the
same year may be dry in Southern California and wet in the northern half
of the state.(15)

Moreover, as R. D. Long writes in a comprehensive review of dendrochronology,
the Suess tree ring calibration curve data “proposed as the solution for
correcting conventional radiocarbon ages cannot be applied to Egypt. As
will be demonstrated, physical geographical location has crucial meaning
to C 14 dating and calibration.” This, he claims, “demolishes the theory
on which the Suess curve rested.”(16)

Then how can the radiocarbon method contribute to the clarification
of Egyptian chronology, especially in the age of the New Kingdom?

The answer to this is that the method can be objectively and
profitably used for the purpose of finding out whether the conventional
or the revised scheme is the true one, and there are two ways of making
the test work for this purpose. The first way is in comparative dating:
according to my reconstruction, the Eighteenth Dynasty (the first of the
New Kingdom) was contemporaneous with the dynasty of Saul and David; Akhnaton
and Tutankhamen were contemporaneous with Jehosphaphat of Jerusalem and
Ahab of Samaria, and with Shalmaneser II of Assyria, all of the ninth
century before the present era. Organic material of Egypt presumably of
the fourteenth century (the time the conventional chronology assigns to
Akhnaton and Tutankhamen) should be compared with organic material from
ninth century Israel or Assyria. I expect that the carbon analysis will
certify the contemporaneity of these periods in Egyptian history on the
one hand, and Judean and Assyrian history on the other.

The other way of using radiocarbon dating to test the correctness of
the reconstruction of ancient history is in testing organic material from
a period removed by several centuries from the last cosmic catastrophe.
A choice case would be Ramses III and the Twentieth Dynasty in general.
As I show in Peoples of the Sea, Ramses III of the historians is
but Nectanebo I, who occupied the Egyptian throne in the first half of
the fourth century and who warred with Artaxerxes II, the Persian.

According to the accepted chronology, Ramses III started to reign in
-1200 or a few years thereafter. The UCLA Egyptologist who claimed that
no carbon test is needed for dating the New Kingdom used Ramses III as
an example:

. . . Since the chronology of ancient Egypt is quite closely
fixed by astronomical evidence . . . radiocarbon, with its substantial
margin of error, could hardly add anything to our knowledge of the chronology
of the New Kingdom. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, Vol. II, dates
Ramses III to 1192-1160 B.C., and this date is not likely to contain a
margin of error greater than about five years each way.

The differnce between the conventional dates and the timetable of the revised
chronology reaches here an almost grotesque figure of 800 years. The fourth
century is by three centuries removed from the last cataclysm that, according
to the evidence cited in Worlds in Collision, took place on March
23, -687. Therefore there need be no apprehension as to the possible effect
of natural events on the carbon content of the living material of the fourth
century, with the exception of the inner rings of trees that in the fourth
century before the present era may already have been three or more centuries
old. Generally, not trees but short lived plants, such as linen, papyrus,
grain, and also hide and mummies, should be used for radiocarbon tests for
archaeological purposes.

Since the problem to solve is whether Ramses III lived almost 32 or
less than 24 centuries ago, the difference being so great as to exceed
25 percent (33 percent if counted on 24 centuries), the radiocarbon method,
with its margin of uncertainty of less than 50 years, must provide an
unambiguous answer in the contest for the title of the true history.

In a number of letters directed to various persons and institutions,
I have asked for such tests. Again—as before the testing of the wood
from the tomb of Tutankhamen—I found resistance; some famous collections
of Egyptological antiquities disclaimed possessing any organic material
(wood, swathings, hide, seeds, papyrus) that could be sacrificed or even
the very possession of such material dating from the Nineteenth, Twentieth,
or Twenty-first dynasties. In one case I was offered one gram of linen
whereas one ounce (ca. 30 grams) are needed for one single test.

Since the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago spent decades
on excavating and describing the palace temple of Ramses III at Medinet
Habu, my request went also that way; but the answer I received from Professor
John Wilson was not promising. Thus I decided to publish Peoples of
the Sea, after much postponement, and let the readers of that volume
clamor for the performance of radiocarbon tests for the solution of the
problem—which of the two conflicting histories of the ancient world
is spurious and which is genuine?

[Dr. John Iles of Ontario, actually did succeed
in one such an endeavor. In 1977 N. B. Millet, curator of the Egyptian
Department of the Royal Ontario Museum, described the historical background
of the mummy of Nakht, which the Canadian Medical Association was analyzing.
According to Millet Nakht was “invariably described as the weaver of the
kny temple” of King Setnakht, the first ruler of the Twentieth
Dynasty and father of Ramses III. Millet wrote about Nakht’s mummy that
there was “unusually clear evidence of its date.”(17)

Upon reading the report, Dr. Iles wrote a letter
to the Canadian Medical Association’s Journal, asking that a Carbon
14 test be performed.(18)

The death of King Setnakht, the first ruler of
the Twentieth Dynasty, is conventionally dated at -1198.

On Dr. Iles’ initiative, the Royal Ontario Museum
submitted linen wrappings from the mummy of Nakht to Dalhousie University
for radiocarbon testing. On November 9, 1979, W. C. Hart of Dalhousie
University wrote to Dr. Iles: “The date on linen wrappings from the mummy
of Nakht is: DAL-350 2295 ± 75 years before the present (1950),” meaning
-345 ± 75. Dr. Iles reported these results in a letter to the association’s
journal. (March 8, 1980).

The radiocarbon date for this well-documented
sample,(19) -345 ± 75
corresponds almost precisely with the revised date for Ramses III but
differs from the conventional date by ca. 800 years.—JNS]